The stupid problem

This was an especially stupid problem. My computer lost power while I was trying to shut it down on UPS power during Hurricane Irma – I didn’t catch my PC in time and the UPS ran out of power. Well several sweaty days later I get power back and I go to turn on my PC. Everything boots up okay, hear the Windows Jingle as it gets to the logon prompt aaaaaaand there is no password box. Wtf? I restart the computer, nothing, same problem. Click on the screen, CTRL + ALT + DELETE – nothing… Finally I called a friend of mine who has to deal with this kind of silly crap all of the time.

Update 10/09/2017

Lost power again recently and it caused the same problem all over again except this time the first solution provided below didn’t work. I had to figure out how to fix it a different way this time.

The stupid fixes

Fix A: The screen is just stuck

Well I felt like an idiot, because I had this problem a few times before. He tells me “Hold down your left mouse button and swipe up with it”. It worked…

That may seem obvious to some, but my PC doesn’t have a touch screen and I usually just press the spacebar to dismiss the initial screen. Totally bewildering after just getting power back, haven’t slept well or eaten properly in 5 days.

Fix B: The screen isn’t stuck, the login box just isn’t showing up at all

This experience was incredibly frustrating, when I researched this the first time I got no where. This time I have found a few more resources to help me out, one youtube video that explains very well what to do and this forum post:

https://www.tenforums.com/user-accounts-family-safety/16829-no-password-prompt-login-screen-can-not-login.html

My instructions on how to fix this are as follows:

1. If you cannot restart your computer in Safe Mode reliably then use the 3x restart method which is as follows:
   1. Boot into windows
   2. Hold power button until PC shuts off
   3. Boot into windows
   4. Hold power button until PC shuts off
   5. Boot into windows
   6. Hold power button until PC shuts off
   7. Upon restarting the machine, you should be prompted that you are booting into Setup
2. While in Setup mode you will see “Choose an option”
3. Click on Troublshoot
4. Advanced Options
5. Startup Settings
6. Press the Restart button
7. After the restarted you will see Startup Setting
8. You will be prompted to choose a number, select option 5 “Enable Safe Mode with Networking”
9. After your machine restarts, it can take a while to get back into windows just be patient
10. You should be able to login to windows at this point
11. All I did at this point is restart my machine, but the YouTube video above shows other things you can do

 A few more things about this

I searched for fixes for this problem and largely the advice I kept finding from Microsoft support was to boot my machine into safe mode or to reinstall windows… Wow – thanks Microsoft. Real sharp troubleshooting there. Could you kindly find better support staff? Kindly do so.